Working flankers in Bangladesh

For reasons too long to state here, an interest in Bangladeshi politics is developing. It was sparked off by a Guardian article containing a phrase to the effect of "... Bangladesh, where assassinating your political opponents is routine ... " which I thought excessive.

That country's English-language newspapers at www.virtualbangladesh.com/news/daily.html confirm the reporter's opinion.

Then a caretaker government - appointed for the period between the end of one administration and the next general election - decided to clean up the voter lists, meanwhile postponing the election due in January 2007. In Jan 2007 a state of emergency was declared pending a general war on the country's endemic corruption.

Top figures in politics from both major parties and business people were arrested and interned under a new set of regulations called the Emergency Power Rules (EPR), pending trials.

But the alleged offences were committed before EPR came into effect, so today the Supreme Court of Bangladesh threw out charges against Sheikh Hasina, leader of the Awami League party. This is expected to lead to the dropping of virtually all charges against all the accused, including Khaleda Zia, leader of the Bangladesh National Party (BNP).

This leaves one wondering: Were the government lawyers so incompetent they didn't realise the law could not be applied retrospectively, or did the "establishment" simply put on a show of tackling corruption knowing that the charges would be thrown out and they could all go back to "business as usual"?